In the wake of last week’s attacks that killed two soldiers in Ottawa and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, privacy watchdogs fear that expanding the powers of Canadian police and intelligence agencies in the name of national security will curb personal freedoms.
The Conservative government on Monday unveiled a new bill—Bill C-44, or the ‘Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act’—to beef up eavesdropping and data collection powers as well as protection for secret agents. Among other things, the bill gives the Canadian Security Intelligence System (CSIS) more powers of surveillance and extends explicit authority to Canada’s spy agency to operate “within or outside Canada.” This would allow the agency to share information on suspected Canadian terrorists abroad with members of the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ group of countries—the U.S., U.K., Australia, and New Zealand.
In addition, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney on Monday announced that “further reforms to protect Canadians from terrorism will be presented in a second forthcoming piece of legislation.”
What’s more, observers note that an anti-cyberbulling law currently wending its way through Canada’s Parliament already includes several controversial surveillance provisions, including one that would allow police to get a court order for online records or bank account information with only reasonable grounds to “suspect,” not “believe,” a crime may take place or has taken place.
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But critics warn that new measures to protect Canadians could infringe on citizens’ right to privacy—with no assurance that they’ll be effective.
“The Conservatives have hinted that they are considering preventive detention and expanded powers to snoop on Canadians with a view to finding out their political views,” Karl Nerenberg wrote on Wednesday. “And that’s where things can get scary.”
He continued:
In a joint statement issued Wednesday, provincial and federal privacy commissioners’ urged the Conservative government not to let counterterrorism measures trump civil liberties:
Also on Wednesday, a group of judges, lawyers, journalists, activists, former diplomats, academics, and community leaders gathered in Ottawa for a conference on national security and human rights hosted by Amnesty International, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and the Human Rights Research and Education Centre, and the Centre for International Policy Studies.
While the conference, held to mark 10 years since the establishment of a judicial inquiry into the human rights violations of Canadian citizen Maher Arar, had been scheduled long before the last week’s killings, the agenda was quite relevant to the conversation on national security.
In the Ottawa Citizen on Wednesday, three human rights advocates—Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada; John Packer, Director of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre at the University of Ottawa; and Roch Tassé, National Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group—cautioned policymakers to balance personal freedoms with national security.
They wrote: